No More $$$ or Warfighting Equipment to Ukraine thumbnail

No More $$$ or Warfighting Equipment to Ukraine

/in , , , /by

By Royal A. Brown III

Zelensky and most of his govt are corrupt oligarchs and our Congress has not done their oversight job regarding all the U.S. assets sent to him. Accountability is non-existent and we should not send anything else unless and until oversight and accountability to the U.S. taxpayers is firmly established and is accurate.

NATO already does not pay its fair share for their defense and continue to depend on the U.S. to contribute the lion’s share. POTUS Trump was right on this and NATO was improving but then went right back to leaning on the US for most of major support for Ukraine. The equally feckless UN has also done nothing. Past time for those most directly affected to pony up their fair share especially since US direct national security is not involved.

The argument that if we don’t stop Russia the Chinese will be further emboldened to invade Taiwan is ludicrous – the feckless Obama 3/Beijing Joe Biden regime no longer scares China and supporting Ukraine won’t make a difference in their actions. There is no doubt the Russian invaders should pull out of the eastern regions of Ukraine they occupy and that Putin would like to see a return to the old Soviet Union power base but continuously poking the Russian Bear is not the way to make them pull out of eastern Ukraine. Zelensky had a chance for peace negotiated by Israel requiring him to stop pushing to join NATO but refused.

The left and RINO neocons are suggesting we provide Ukraine with offensive weapons like long range missiles and F 16 fighter/bombers for use in striking inside Russia and this would surely escalate the war not stop it. The positioning of U.S. boots on the ground in Poland in the form of the 101st Airborne Division is a further provocation. No U.S. military boots should set foot in Ukraine. The failed Obama/Biden administration had an opportunity to show strength against the Russian takeover of Crimea back in early 2014 and did nothing except impose ineffective sanctions. This failure emboldened the Russians. It is doubtful they will ever return mostly pro-Russian Crimea but a peaceful solution could return use of Black Sea ports in Crimea to Ukraine.

I would remind all that every major war since Korea has been started by and prosecuted by Democrats and neocons e.g. Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan at a cost of over 64,000 US lives and Trillions of dollars; many tens of thousands of wounded and maimed and ended in failure. Only the war against ISIS in Syria, Iraq and other Islamist countries was successfully conducted by President Trump who also got us out of Iraq and had a plan to get us out of Afghanistan without further loss of U.S. lives, equipment and key air base. The Biden pullout of Afghanistan was an unmitigated disaster. We can not trust the Obama 3/Beijing Joe Biden regime to get us out of the war between Russia and Ukraine.

The article at link below describes some of the corruption going on in Ukraine including information that only 30% of cash and equipment U.S. has sent to Ukraine is actually going where intended to help them fight war with Russia.

Ukraine’s History of Corruption a Growing Concern as US Military Aid Surges

By • Published on March 18, 2023

ince Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, the United States has provided Kyiv with military, economic, humanitarian, and other forms of aid.

According to official sources, the total U.S. contribution to the Ukrainian war effort now stands at some $113 billion, vastly exceeding contributions made by Kyiv’s other allies.

But as the bills have continued to mount, so have calls for greater oversight as to how those funds are being spent. Recent corruption scandals in Kyiv have raised fears that U.S. taxpayer dollars are, in the absence of accountability, being squandered.

What’s more, dissident voices are pointing out that the war shows little–if any–sign of ending soon, despite the West’s seemingly boundless support for Ukraine.

Breaking It Down

Responding to questions from The Epoch Times, the Washington-based Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) confirmed that the $113 billion figure was “still accurate.”

This figure, it explained, “includes only the funding packages Congress approved through December 2022, and Congress has not approved any further packages in 2023 thus far.”

According to CRFB data, roughly three-fifths of the $113 billion ($67 billion) has been allocated for “defense needs,” while the remaining two-fifths ($46 billion) has been earmarked for “non-defense concerns.”

More precise breakdowns can appear bewildering, with official and semi-official sources (state agencies, think tanks, media outlets, etc.) often appearing to contradict one another.

“The confusion tends to be in how money is appropriated and spent by the government,” said the CRFB, a nonpartisan group with the stated aim of “educating the public on issues with significant fiscal policy impact.”

Congress, the group explained, “has constitutional authority to decide how much federal spending there should be–the “power of the purse”–while the Executive Branch (the president and other agencies) are charged with spending that money.”

“Depending on when you account for that spending will get you different amounts,” the CRFB added, “because it takes the Executive time to actually spend the money Congress appropriates.”

Read more.

©Royal A. Brown. All rights reserved.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Blinken announces $150,000,000 in ‘humanitarian aid’ for Niger, Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali and Mauritania

Poland will be forced to ‘enter the war’ if Ukraine fails to defend itself against Russia, Warsaw’s ambassador to France warns

Biden Treasury Secretary’s Policy Destroys Small U.S. Banks While Bailing Out Chinese Depositors, Experts Say thumbnail

Biden Treasury Secretary’s Policy Destroys Small U.S. Banks While Bailing Out Chinese Depositors, Experts Say

/in , , , , /by

By The Geller Report

Once the big four banks control all the money, they will control everything else, including what kind of business you can run, what you can and cannot say on social media, and what opinions you can hold.

This is the biggest power grab since the election rigging of 2020.

By: Jason Cohe, Daily Caller, n on March 17, 2023

  • Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s recent decision to backstop all uninsured deposits at two failed banks due to their “systemic risk” to the U.S. economy not only benefits the Chinese Communist Party, but also potentially endangers smaller financial institutions, experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation. 
  • Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank both collapsed last week, resulting in a full takeover of the financial institutions by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. 
  • “It’s absolutely atrocious that we are yet again, using taxpayer money to bail out the CCP,” E.J. Antoni, research fellow for Regional Economics at The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. 

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s recently announced policy to safeguard all uninsured deposits at failing banks deemed to be a “systemic risk” to the U.S. economy would destroy smaller financial institutions while simultaneously bailing out Chinese depositors, experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Yellen, alongside the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and Federal Reserve, announced Sunday that all uninsured depositors who held accounts at the now-defunct Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and Signature Bank would be fully covered, adding that “decisive actions” were needed to “protect the U.S. economy.” SVB was particularly popular among Chinese tech startups, as it provided easy access to U.S. investor funding, CNBC reported.

SVB’s stock collapsed last week amid numerous customer bank runs following the institution’s disclosure of a $1.8 billion net loss on asset sales on the back of high interest rates, forcing regulators to shut down the bank. Just two days later, Signature Bank, a premier lender in the crypto space, was closed by regulators due to “systemic risks,” CNBC reported.

A bailout of uninsured depositors at the collapsed banks benefits the Chinese Communist Party at taxpayers’ expense and could lead to stricter regulatory controls that smaller U.S. banks would be unable to withstand, experts told the DCNF.

“It’s absolutely atrocious that we are yet again, using taxpayer money to bail out the CCP,” E.J. Antoni, research fellow for Regional Economics at The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis, told the DCNF. “And so now whenever the government has these knee-jerk reactions, we end up sending dollars where the American people would not like them to go.”

During COVID-19, when the government authorized sending Payment Protection Program loans and unemployment payments, it also distributed taxpayer dollars to individuals in China, Antoni told DCNF. “Anytime the government spends money, they’re by definition spending taxpayer dollars … So taxpayers are ultimately on the hook for all of this.”

In 2012, SVB launched a joint venture with Shanghai Pudong Development Bank (SPDB), resulting in the creation of SPD Silicon Valley Bank Co., CNBC reported. The venture was focused on providing services to tech startups.

Additionally, in the wake of the SVB collapse, lawmakers may seize on the chance to create a restrictive regulatory environment that “small community banks are just not going to be able to withstand,” according to Alfredo Ortiz, president and CEO of the Job Creators Network.

Unlike big banks, smaller financial institutions face greater scrutiny from regulators, Anne Balcer, Independent Community Bankers of America senior executive vice president and chief of Government Relations and Public Policy, told the DCNF.

“There’s almost a disproportionate or heightened scrutiny on the smaller institutions,” Balcer said. “Regulators keep a much tighter leash on the community banks, which is ironic,” because they are less risky than banks like SVB.

Read more.

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

How Government from the School House to the White House Subsidizes FAILURE! thumbnail

How Government from the School House to the White House Subsidizes FAILURE!

/in , , /by

By Dr. Rich Swier

“A fine is a tax for doing something wrong. A tax is a fine for doing something right.” — Anonymous

“I’m proud to pay taxes in the United States; the only thing is, I could be just as proud for half the money.” — Arthur Godfrey

“The income tax created more criminals than any other single act of government.” — Barry Goldwater

American taxpayers are feeling the pinch as they see $Trillions going to everyone but themselves and their families.

We believe that the most onerous form of U.S. taxpayer abuse is the federal government’s subsidizing of failure.

Taxes should be used to reward success, not failure. That’s common sense. If you want more success then reward conduct that produces more success.

Today, the vast amount of federal taxpayer money being spent is on those who are failures. Therefore, by definition, we the people get for our money more and more failures!

Be it companies, banks, non-profits, people or nation states. Bailouts are now the norm rather than the exception. Bailouts and government subsidies are now the rule rather than the exception—politicians are subsidizing failure.

Therefore we get more and more failure.

Here are our top egregious abuses created by the federal government against the American taxpayers from the year of our Lord 1635 to the year 2023:

  1. The 16th Amendment. Perhaps the most egregious act ever put into the U.S. Constitution is the 16th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (Amendment XVI) which was passed by Congress in 1909 in response to the 1895 Supreme Court case of Pollock v. Farmers, allowing Congress to levy an income tax without apportioning it among the states on the basis of population. Bill Benson’s findings, published in “The Law That Never Was, The Fraud of the 16th Amendment and Personal Income Tax,” made a convincing case that the 16th amendment was not legally ratified and that Secretary of State Philander Knox was not merely in error, but committed fraud when he declared it ratified in February 1913. Read more about how the 16th Amendment was not ratified by the states. The most harmful and long lasting part of what the 16th Amendment did is provide presidents and the U.S. Congress with an endless flow of money to fund failures.
  2. The Failed Great Society Agenda. Funding Broken Families. One of the first acts of funding failure was Lyndon B. Johnson’s failed 1963 Great Society program. A program that made sweeping cultural and legislative reforms that failed. The Great Society began the destruction of the traditional family. It created fatherless homes where if a man was present in the household then welfare was denied. A series of 200 laws were passed to and signed into law by Lyndon B. Johnson from 1964 to 1966 that fundamentally transformed for the worse public education, healthcare and America’s culture of meritocracy, in the name of “reversing racial inequality.” Rather than reducing poverty, Johnson’s Great Society created more government dependency. Click here to watch the video: Lyndon B. Johnson: Failures & Downfalls.
  3. Taxpayer Funded Failed Public Schools. On April 23, 1635, the first public school in what would become the United States was established in Boston, Massachusetts. The Boston Latin School, established in 1635, was the first school in what is now the United States. Although it has changed locations, the public school is still operating today. Since 1635 government control of education has failed to teach children how to succeed. Today America’s public education system teaches children what to think not how to think. One example is for the first time in 100 years America’s average IQ has declined. Schools have become the propaganda arm of government because it is the government that funds public schools. Add to this the growing influence of teacher’s unions and we have the perfect mix of failure built upon failure. This government control has inextricably lead to the dumbing down of young Americans to a 6th-grade level. Note: According to FAIR, providing education, health care, law enforcement, and social and government services to illegal aliens and their dependents costs Texas taxpayers $12.1 billion a year.
  4. Corporate Bailouts Paid for by Taxpayers. In an April 15, 2020 Forbes article titled The Truth About The COVID-19 Bailouts Kathryn Judge reported, “One of the biggest lies that very smart people are spreading right now is that the government’s efforts to shield large corporations from COVID-19 do not give rise to moral hazard. They do. By allowing shareholders and creditors to avoid losses they agreed to bear, these policies will induce companies to continue to take on too much debt. This increases the fragility of the corporate sector and makes it more likely that the government will have to come to the rescue again when the next crisis strikes. Acknowledging this moral hazard does not negate the importance of the rescue efforts underway. When fear and uncertainty cause markets to seize up, the government should help restore the flow of money and credit. Doing so eases the pain that the crisis inflicts and lays the foundation for a smoother recovery. But that is no reason to deny the government’s recent efforts also have costs, particularly when there are ways to reduce those costs.”
  5. Bank Bailouts Funded by Taxpayers. CNN Money reported that since 2008 the Treasury Department has invested about $200 billion in hundreds of banks through its “Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP)” program. Congress initially authorized $700 billion for TARP in October 2008, that authority was reduced to $475 billion by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (Dodd-Frank Act). This was an effort to prop up capital and support new lending which led to banks becoming dependent on taxpayer funded bailouts. Here’s a list of the banks that got bailed out. This does not include the most recent bailouts of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and several other banks in 2023, which has in effect nationalized the U.S. banking system.
  6. Taxpayer Funded Healthcare. David U. Himmelstein, MD and Steffie Woolhandler, MD, MPH in a 2016 National Library of Medicine study titled The Current and Projected Taxpayer Shares of US Health Costs found “We tabulated official Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services figures on direct government spending for health programs and public employees’ health benefits for 2013, and projected figures through 2024. We calculated the value of tax subsidies for private spending from official federal budget documents and figures for state and local tax collections. Results. Tax-funded health expenditures totaled $1.877 trillion in 2013 and are projected to increase to $3.642 trillion in 2024. Government’s share of overall health spending was 64.3% of national health expenditures in 2013 and will rise to 67.1% in 2024. Government health expenditures in the United States account for a larger share of gross domestic product (11.2% in 2013) than do total health expenditures in any other nation.” Note: This study does not include the costs of providing free healthcare to illegal aliens. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has projected the cost of funding illegal aliens at $21.6 billion.
  7. Taxpayer Funded Green Energy Projects. In 2019 TalkBusiness.net in a column titled Renewable energy collects 93% of federal subsidies reported, Renewable energy obtained 93% of federal energy fuel subsidies while generating 22% of total U.S. energy in fiscal year 2016, according to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). Many states also waive tax payments for renewable energy or offer other deals for renewable energy production. The EIA recently evaluated energy-related subsidies that the federal government provided in fiscal year 2016 as an update to a study on fiscal years 2013 and 2010. Federal subsidies that support non-fossil fuels, including renewable energy and nuclear power, were $7.047 billion in fiscal year 2016, and more than 14 times higher that the subsides for fossil fuels, which were $489 million. The previous subsidies don’t include state or local subsidies, mandates or incentives. Three-fifths of states have mandated levels of renewable energy production, and the incentives that many states provide have been a result of lobbying by renewable energy interests, according to the Institute for Energy Research (IER).” American Action Forum estimates that the Green New Deal (GND) as enacted “will cost every American household $65,000 per year and a total price tag could reach $93 trillion in the first 10 years alone.“
  8. Taxpayer funded Murder via Abortion. On March 28, 2017 Carole Novielli reported, “The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has published shocking information dispelling Planned Parenthood’s deceptive talking points that federal taxpayers are not funding abortions. This information is critical, because if the American taxpayers understood what their money really goes to, they would oppose federal funding of the nation’s largest abortion provider, whose abortion market share is almost 35 percent nationally…A 2015 Forbes blog on health care and entitlement reform contended that ‘taxpayers subsidize roughly 24% of all abortion costs in the U.S. with 6.6% borne by federal taxpayers and the remaining 17.4% picked up by state taxpayers.’” On Oct 2, 2015 Forbes’ Chris Conover reported, “As best I can determine, taxpayers subsidize roughly 24% of all abortion costs in the U.S. with 6.6% borne by federal taxpayers and the remaining 17.4% picked up by state taxpayers. If we apply the 24% figure to the total number of abortions,  this is equivalent to taxpayers paying the full cost of 250,000 abortions a year, with about 70,000 financed by federal taxpayers  and 180,000 financed by state taxpayers.”
  9. Funding of Foreign Wars. American taxpayers have funded multiple war efforts from the War of 1812 cost $1.78 billion, Mexican-American War cost $2.72 billion, American Revolution cost $2.75 billion, Spanish-American War cost $10.33 billion, American Civil War (Union and Confederate) cost $91.16 billion, WW I cost $381.8 billion, WW II cost $4.69 trillion, Korean War cost $389.81 billion, Vietnam War cost $843.63 billion, War in Afghanistan cost $910.47 billion, Iraq War cost $1.01 trillion, and now the War between Russia and Ukraine $115 billion cost to date. Despite the cost in lives and money, America has not clearly won any war since WW II.
  10. Taxpayer Funded Pornography, including Drag Queen Performances, to Under-aged Children. American taxpayers went from the 1981 Congressionally passed Adolescent Family Life Act (AFLA), to the 1996 Title V of the Welfare Reform Act, or the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), set up a new system of grants for states providing abstinence-only-until-marriage education that used a specific eight-point criteria, known as the “A-H definition.”, to the 2000  Congressionally created a third abstinence-only education program (Title XI, §1110 of the Social Security Act), funded through the maternal and child health block grant’s Special Projects of Regional and National Significance Programs (SPRANS), that bypassed the need for state approval, to 2007 when nearly half of all states had decided against applying for state-based abstinence-only education due to both its restrictions and the requirement that states contribute matching funds.  These states include Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. In 2009  President Barack Obama’s 2010 budget eliminated most federal funding for abstinence-only sex-education programs, replacing it with funding for  increase contraceptive use.  Obama‘s programs permitted discussion of birth control. Today public schools via federal and state funds and donations from non-profits are promoting the grooming of under-aged children for sex, placing pornographic books in public school libraries, the Community Foundation of Sarasota County fund ‘QUEERCON’ at the School of Arts and Sciences a Florida school and libraries and schools hosting drag queen reading hours. Click here to read more articles about Drag Queens and the grooming of underaged children.
  11. Taxpayer Funded Chemical and Surgical Castration of Men, Women and Children. In an October 7, 2022 Federal Times article titled Federal health plans to expand gender-affirming care coverage for 2023 reported, “…A quarter of Fortune 500 companies offer transition-related care to employees, including popular providers like Blue Cross Blue Shield and Aetna. This year, coverage will again include gender-affirming care, defined by the Kaiser Family Foundation as ‘social, psychological, behavioral or medical (including hormonal treatment or surgery) interventions designed to support and affirm an individual’s gender identity’. This move traces back to President Joe Biden’s 2021 executive order on diversity, inclusion, and accessibility in the federal workforce, which directs the Office of Personnel Management to ‘promote equitable healthcare coverage and services for enrolled LGBTQ+ employees’ and covered family members through the Federal Employee Health Benefits program…The average government contribution will increase by 6.6%, while the enrollee’s share will increase an average of 8.7%. That means for a biweekly pay period, an employee on a self-only plan will pay about $8.11 more. Those in a family plan can expect an average increase of $20.87.”
  12. LGBTQE+ Grooming of Children Funded by Taxpayers. On May 3, 2022 wrote, “Early exposures to pornographic images and verbiage are amongst the very best ways to facilitate lifelong sexual, emotional, educational, social, and mental health problems.  Here’s how pornographically-sexualized children can become dysfunctional, suicidal, and homicidal: 1. Bisexual violence is greatly promoted via pornography in which the human body is objectified as a source of entertainment for adult pleasure; 2. Children exposed to pornography are likely to flounder all of their lives and never fully recover from their emotional problems emanating from pornography abuse; 3. Children and teens preoccupied with pornographic images in their minds do not focus or concentrate on their studies; 4. Socially, children abused with pornography are likely to function at the extremes of anti-social behaviors – loners or youths constantly needing others around them. The loners can become homicidal or fiercely entombed in themselves; 5. In terms of mental health problems, children sexualized via pornography are at least as sexually-abused as children who are molested. Violence inherent in pornography becomes normalized in the course of human development, and sexualized children can present without conscience or compassion.” Newman concluded that, “In terms of mental health problems, children sexualized via pornography are at least as sexually-abused as children who are molested. Violence inherent in pornography becomes normalized in the course of human development, and sexualized children can present without conscience or compassion.” Our public schools, colleges and universities are promoting the LGBTQE+ agenda under the current administrations Diversity, Inclusion and Equity policies.
  13. Taxpayer Funding of Bloated Government from the School House to the White House. The more enriched and powerful the governments at every level become the more dangerous they are to the “three Fs” — Faith, Family and Freedom.

The Bottom Line

American greatness was built upon the foundation of individual merit. That is why the U.S. Constitution begins with these words,

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

America was built upon the ideal of “equal opportunity under the law.”

Governments at every level, on the other hand, have become enamored with the “myth” of “equality of outcomes.”

Equality of outcomes, like the failed Great Society, requires the redistribution of both wealth and opportunity.

Sadly, since the passage of the 16th Amendment, the government, not the market of ideas has become the sole arbiter of who wins and who loses.

This is why it is important for we the people to elect those who will defend our faith, families and freedoms.

Big government, using taxpayers money has destroyed our union, promotes injustice, funds domestic violence against its citizens (e.g. J6), and has destroyed our prosperity.

Today “the swamp” goes from the school house to the White House.

At each and every level they’re finding new ways to fund failure, which always promotes inequality.

America must return to the time when we promoted and rewarded success and entrepreneurship.

©Dr. Rich Swier. All rights reserved.

Silicon Valley Bank Parent Company Files For Bankruptcy thumbnail

Silicon Valley Bank Parent Company Files For Bankruptcy

/in , , , , /by

By The Daily Caller

SVB Financial Group, the parent company for California tech lender Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in New York Friday, the biggest filing of its kind since Washington Mutual Inc. in 2008.

SVB, which was SVB Financial Group’s main business, was taken over by federal regulators after it collapsed due to a bank run last week, with the Federal Reserve intervening to insure depositors. The bank announced it was filing for bankruptcy Friday in a bid to preserve the value of its assets.

“The Chapter 11 process will allow SVB Financial Group to preserve value as it evaluates strategic alternatives for its prized businesses and assets, especially SVB Capital and SVB Securities,” William Kosturos, Chief Restructuring Officer for SVB Financial Group, said in a statement. “SVB Capital and SVB Securities continue to operate and serve clients, led by their longstanding and independent leadership teams.”

SVB is under the jurisdiction of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and not included in the Chapter 11 filing, according to The Washington Post. Bankruptcy offers a court-supervised reorganization to assist SVB Financial Group to find buyers for its assets besides SVB because it is under federal control, according to Reuters.

AUTHOR

JASON COHEN

Contributor.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Janet Yellen’s Policy Would Destroy Small US Banks While Bailing Out Chinese Depositors, Experts Say

SVB Had Close Financial Ties With Al Gore’s Venture Capital Firm

‘We’ve Got Some Cleanup To Do’: Former FDIC Chair Says There Will ‘Probably’ Be More Bank Failures

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Why SVB and Signature Bank Failed so Fast – and Why the U.S. Banking Crisis Isn’t Over Yet thumbnail

Why SVB and Signature Bank Failed so Fast – and Why the U.S. Banking Crisis Isn’t Over Yet

/in , , , , /by

By MercatorNet – Navigating Modern Complexities

With over $1 trillion of bank deposits currently uninsured, the banking crisis is far from over.

Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank failed with enormous speed – so quickly that they could be textbook cases of classic bank runs, in which too many depositors withdraw their funds from a bank at the same time. The failures at SVB and Signature were two of the three biggest in U.S. banking history, following the collapse of Washington Mutual in 2008.

How could this happen when the banking industry has been sitting on record levels of excess reserves – or the amount of cash held beyond what regulators require?

While the most common type of risk faced by a commercial bank is a jump in loan defaults – known as credit risk – that’s not what is happening here. As an economist who has expertise in banking, I believe it boils down to two other big risks every lender faces: interest rate risk and liquidity risk.

Interest rate risk

A bank faces interest rate risk when the rates increase rapidly within a shorter period.

That’s exactly what has happened in the U.S. since March 2022. The Federal Reserve has been aggressively raising rates – 4.5 percentage points so far – in a bid to tame soaring inflation. As a result, the yield on debt has jumped at a commensurate rate.

The yield on one-year U.S. government Treasury notes hit a 17-year high of 5.25% in March 2023, up from less than 0.5% at the beginning of 2022. Yields on 30-year Treasurys have climbed almost 2 percentage points.

As yields on a security go up, its price goes down. And so such a rapid rise in rates in so short a time caused the market value of previously issued debt – whether corporate bonds or government Treasury bills – to plunge, especially for longer-dated debt.

For example, a 2 percentage point gain in a 30-year bond’s yield can cause its market value to plunge by around 32%.

SVB, as Silicon Valley Bank is known, had a massive share of its assets – 55% – invested in fixed-income securities, such as U.S. government bonds.

Of course, interest rate risk leading to a drop in market value of a security is not a huge problem as long as the owner can hold onto it until maturity, at which point it can collect its original face value without realizing any loss. The unrealized loss stays hidden on the bank’s balance sheet and disappears over time.

But if the owner has to sell the security before its maturity at a time when the market value is lower than face value, the unrealized loss becomes an actual loss.

That’s exactly what SVB had to do earlier this year as its customers, dealing with their own cash shortfalls, began withdrawing their deposits – while even higher interest rates were expected.

This bring us to liquidity risk.

Liquidity risk

Liquidity risk is the risk that a bank won’t be able to meet its obligations when they come due without incurring losses.

For example, if you spend US$150,000 of your savings to buy a house and down the road you need some or all of that money to deal with another emergency, you’re experiencing a consequence of liquidity risk. A large chunk of your money is now tied up in the house, which is not easily exchangeable for cash.

Customers of SVB were withdrawing their deposits beyond what it could pay using its cash reserves, and so to help meet its obligations the bank decided to sell $21 billion of its securities portfolio at a loss of $1.8 billion. The drain on equity capital led the lender to try to raise over $2 billion in new capital.

The call to raise equity sent shockwaves to SVB’s customers, who were losing confidence in the bank and rushed to withdraw cash. A bank run like this can cause even a healthy bank to go bankrupt in a matter days, especially now in the digital age.

In part this is because many of SVB’s customers had deposits well above the $250,000 insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. – and so they knew their money might not be safe if the bank were to fail. Roughly 88% of deposits at SVB were uninsured.

Signature faced a similar problem, as SVB’s collapse prompted many of its customers to withdraw their deposits out of a similar concern over liquidity risk. About 90% of its deposits were uninsured.

Systemic risk?

All banks face interest rate risk today on some of their holdings because of the Fed’s rate-hiking campaign.

This has resulted in $620 billion in unrealized losses on bank balance sheets as of December 2022.

But most banks are unlikely to have significant liquidity risk.

While SVB and Signature were complying with regulatory requirements, the composition of their assets was not in line with industry averages.

Signature had just over 5% of its assets in cash and SVB had 7%, compared with the industry average of 13%. In addition, SVB’s 55% of assets in fixed-income securities compares with the industry average of 24%.

The U.S. government’s decision to backstop all deposits of SVB and Signature regardless of their size should make it less likely that banks with less cash and more securities on their books will face a liquidity shortfall because of massive withdrawals driven by sudden panic.

However, with over $1 trillion of bank deposits currently uninsured, I believe that the banking crisis is far from over.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Woke Universities Sacrificing Science on the Altar of Ideology and Profit thumbnail

Woke Universities Sacrificing Science on the Altar of Ideology and Profit

/in , , , , /by

By MercatorNet – Navigating Modern Complexities

Three case studies from Canada and Australia about suppression of heterodox opinions in universities.

Two thousand five hundred years ago the Greek playwright Aeschylus is reputed to have said “the first victim of war is truth.” Recent events in the academic world have demonstrated that truth is also a casualty when ideology and commercial interests are at stake.

The most recent case occurred last month at Laval University in Canada, when professor and RNA expert Patrick Provost was suspended without pay for anti-mRNA vaccine comments. Patrick Provost has run an RNA lab for 20 years and has published nearly 100 peer-reviewed studies. In 2003, Provost’s work on the role of microRNA in gene expression was named one of the 10 discoveries of the year by the Quebec Science Magazine.

Based on the government’s own hospitalization and mortality statistics for children, which are both very low, Provost said he believed the risks of Covid-19 vaccination in children could outweigh the benefits because of the potential side-effects from mRNA vaccines, which have only gone through two of the usual four stages of testing required before vaccines are approved for general use.

“I was just doing what I was hired to do,” he said in an interview. “I had some concerns about something, I searched the literature and I prepared a talk and I delivered it to the public. Being censored for doing what I’ve been trained to do — and hired to do — well, it’s hard to believe.”

“As soon as you raise some concerns about vaccines, or side-effects, or complications related to vaccines, then it’s worse than the N-word,” he continued. “You’re condemned by the media, by the government and you’re chased and put down …. We should be able to discuss any ideas — any opinions — and because I expressed opinions that went against the government narrative, I was suspended.”

Regarding the University’s reaction, one might well wonder about the fact that the top 20 pharmaceutical companies spent C$139 billion on Research & Development in 2022, a portion of which went to university researchers. Faculties of medicine are particularly favoured beneficiaries of such funding. And Patrick Provost is a professor at the Faculty of Medicine.

In an entirely different field, geophysicist Peter Ridd was sacked in 2018 by James Cook University, in Australia, for criticizing the work of a colleague studying the Great Barrier Reef. In an email to a journalist, he said the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority “is grossly misusing some scientific ‘data’ to make the case that the Great Barrier Reef is greatly damaged.” Ridd maintained that scientific organisations were “quite happy to spin a story for their own purposes, in this case to demonstrate that there is massive damage to the Great Barrier Reef.”

In a report published last year based, like Provost’s talk, on publicly available data, from the Australian Institute of Marine Science, aka the AIMS, Ridd notes that “the average coral cover as of 2022 is (…) the highest level on record. Figure 2 makes it clear that AIMS has effectively hidden the very good news about the reef between 2016 and 2022 by not publishing the Great Barrier Reef average data since 2017.”

Since 2014, the Australian government has committed A$4 billion to saving the Reef. The Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, based at James Cook University, has been a major recipient of this funding. It should be no surprise that Ridd’s colleagues did not take kindly to someone undermining the claims on which their research, and the government funding that subsidizes it, is based.

Back in Canada, Frances Widdowson, a professor of economics, policy, and justice at Mount Royal University in Alberta was fired last year after colleagues and activists called for her termination because she dared to challenge groupthink on indigenous issues. Widdowson had made the self-evident claim that residential schools provided access to education that otherwise might not have been available, which was not an endorsement of the residential school system, but a mere statement of fact. A large percentage of Indian parents willingly opted for residential schools as they were the only way for their children to get an education. Despite the factuality of the claim, she was vilified and called a “denialist.”

Widdowson observes that no one dare question indigenous leaders in Canada these days, which makes it difficult to check their claims about buried remains of children. Widdowson has remarked that while lurid talk of buried indigenous children has circulated for more than 25 years and is “now firmly ensconced within the Canadian consciousness,” there is still no hard evidence to support it. Not a single body has been found at the Kamloops Indian Residential School where 215 bodies were allegedly detected by ground-penetrating radar.

Widdowson’s words in her last hearing at the disciplinary committee just before being fired are worth quoting as a moral to these stories:

“My final thought is that I don’t think it’s understood, not just at Mount Royal but in universities generally, that there is a fundamental conflict between academic universities, academic values and these ideological types of intrusions which are put forward under a number of different names, whether it be diversity, inclusion or equity policies. (…). I’m being pushed out because I can’t accept things that I believe to be untrue. I can’t say that I think something is true when I don’t think it’s true and I think it would be a violation of my academic position to do that. And unfortunately there are people who are either opportunistic or just afraid who won’t stand behind the academic foundation of the university.”

The university is now a house without foundations. We all know what eventually happens to such houses.

Air Force Goes on Diversity, Inclusion, Equity [DIE] Hiring Spree: Top Job Pays up to $183,500 thumbnail

Air Force Goes on Diversity, Inclusion, Equity [DIE] Hiring Spree: Top Job Pays up to $183,500

/in , , , , , /by

By The Geller Report

The left ha destroyed our schools, universities, corporations, airlines, etc with these racist policies. Now they are destroying our last line of defense.

America will lose it’s competition with China if this madness continues beyond 2024.

Air Force goes on diversity, equity, inclusion hiring spree: Top job pays up to $183,500

The Air Force is looking to build a ‘world-class’ DEI program

By Fox News, March 15, 2023

The U.S. Air Force this month launched an effort to hire a handful of senior-level diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) managers and is hoping to place these officials in posts across the country, from Washington, D.C., to Alaska.

Each post pays at least $82,000 per year, and the top position at the Pentagon could pay more than $180,000 per year.

Read more.

AUTHOR

Geller Report Staff

RELATED ARTICLES:

Susan Rice wants every federal agency to focus on racial equity

Here’s What the Feds Are Teaching in “Diversity” Training

THE NEW NAZISM: Biden Gives Power to Susan Rice for Sweeping Racial Overhaul of the Federal Government: “Agency Equity Teams”

Top School Principal Hides Students’ Academic Awards in Name of ‘Equity’

Biden’s Sec of Transportation Buttigieg Launches $1 Billion Plan to Ensure ‘Racial Equity’ in Roads

Biden Regime Unleashes ‘Total Transformation [Destruction] Of Government’ With ‘Equity Action Plans’

United Airlines Graduates First Class Of New Pilots: 80% of Them Are Women or People of Color

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Why We Should Let Bad Banks Fail thumbnail

Why We Should Let Bad Banks Fail

/in , , , , /by

By Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)

Bad banks need consequences. Let them fail.

By now, you’ve likely heard about regulators closing down Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and now Signature Bank as well.

While I’m not going to go into all the details, the basic story is described well in this article on Seeking Alpha. Essentially, SVB received a large influx of deposits as the Federal Reserve flooded the market with dollars during COVID.

From there, SVB went out and bought government bonds to store that money. But then, the Federal Reserve started enacting policies which moved interest rates up. The problem? As interest rates rose, the bonds SVB purchased in the past declined in value.

Bond prices and the interest rate have an inverse relationship. If interest rates increase, you can earn a higher return on financial assets purchased today. When that happens, bonds issued at a previously lower rate must sell at a discount to compete.

So when rates rose, SVB’s assets (composed largely of old lower-rate government bonds) plummeted in value.

The key question now is, what are we going to do about it?

I have a modest proposal—let them fail.

Allowing banks to fail may sound extreme, but it’s really the most reasonable solution. It’s true there will be some costs if the banks fail. Any time a business fails, other investors tied financially to the company lose.

But here’s the rub—people who invest in bad businesses should lose. SVB’s failure is a reflection of the fact that it was a wealth shredder. It took depositors’ perfectly good cash, and converted it into now severely devalued bonds.

Banks that destroy wealth shouldn’t be allowed to continue to do so indefinitely. And when depositors make a “run” on bad banks, they’re performing a public service.

Kicker: a run on an insolvent bank has the salutary effect of pulling the plug on a wealth-destroying machine.

— Lawrence H. White (@lawrencehwhite1) March 11, 2023

At this point, a bank bailout not only would mean the taxpayers will be left holding the bag for bankers’ mistakes—it would mean screwing up incentives in the banking industry even more.

To see the incentive problem, consider an example. Imagine a world where, no matter the circumstances, the government will pay to fix cars after every accident. What do you think this would do to the number of car accidents per year? It would sky-rocket.

If you never need fear paying a price for crashing your car, why drive carefully? There is still some incentive to avoid serious accidents due to injury, but the point is this system lowers the cost of risky behavior, and therefore lowers an individual’s incentive to be careful. Economists call this a moral hazard problem.

And this is the primary issue with bank bailouts. If the government sets a precedent that all bank failures will be ameliorated by using taxpayer money, banks will engage in risky behavior which they otherwise would not. Why be cautious with depositors’ money if you get a bailout no matter what?

You cannot have a healthy free market when you privatize the profits and socialize the losses. The taxpayer’s wallet, if treated like common property, will be subject to the tragedy of the commons.

Banking, where the rules are made up and the losses don’t matter

— Brian Albrecht (@BrianCAlbrecht) March 12, 2023

And I don’t just mean that I’m against a formal bailout to save investors. I’m opposed to taxpayer dollars being reallocated to save the bottom line of anyone involved. Some may worry about small depositors, but the FDIC already insures up to $250,000 (regardless of what I or anyone else thinks about that policy), meaning every depositor who has less than that in their account is getting their money back already.

And for the larger depositors? Business deals have risks. We cannot pay people to ignore that fact. If you want to house more than a quarter of a million dollars in any one institution you should be very careful in picking.

If some individual wants to come along and buy SVB or these other failing banks and try to resuscitate them, I invite them to try. Maybe there is a profit opportunity there. But if the choice is between a bailout and letting them fail, the answer is clear to me.

If they can have the profits, they should have the losses as well.

AUTHOR

Peter Jacobsen

Peter Jacobsen teaches economics and holds the position of Gwartney Professor of Economics. He received his graduate education at George Mason University.

EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

BIDEN BANK CRISIS: Dow Plunges 700 Points, ‘First Domino To Drop’ thumbnail

BIDEN BANK CRISIS: Dow Plunges 700 Points, ‘First Domino To Drop’

/in , , , , /by

By The Geller Report

Stock indexes are on pace for one of their worst days this year.
Woke and broke. And still Biden and the Democrats are pushing, legislating and imposing these fatal polices.

This is the poison fruit of the diversity, equity and inclusion hiring practices that elevates whining whiners and demonizes talent, intelligence and skill.

Life was golden under Trump.

Dow Plunges 700 Points As BlackRock Chief Warns SVB Collapse Merely ‘First Domino To Drop’

By: Derek Saul, Forbes, March 15, 2023: Forbes Staff

U.S. stocks plunged in Wednesday trading as concerns about the health of the global banking industry continued to weigh on the market, with one high-profile Wall Street bigwig cautioning the contagion of Silicon Valley Bank’s failure could spread further than previously anticipated.

Key Facts

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 717 points, or 2.2%, by 1 p.m. ET; the S&P 500 and tech-heavy Nasdaq similarly slid 2% and 1.4%, respectively.

The domestic losses come amid broad declines in stocks abroad, with the Zurich-based bank Credit Suisse’s 24% slide to a record low in share prices amid capital concerns headlining the losses.

Also stoking concerns about the fallout of Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank and Silvergate Capital’s recent closures was a bleak letter from Blackrock CEO Larry Fink warning the failures could simply be the first “domino[es] to drop” before a potential “cascade throughout the U.S. regional banking sector with more seizures and shutdowns coming.”

Regional bank stocks captained Wednesday’s sinking ship, with share prices of PacWest sinking 20% and First Republic dropping 23%.

Keep reading.

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

RELATED VIDEO: Economist warns U.S. is ‘on brink of a 2008 style financial crisis’

RELATED ARTICLES:

Tucker Carlson: SVB Bank Failure Could Be An Isolated Incident But Our Leaders Seem To Want To Accelerate It

WOKE AND BROKE: While Silicon Valley Bank Collapsed, Top Exec Pushed ‘Woke’ Programs

‘Rapid Deterioration’: Moody’s Rating Service Downgrades U.S. Banking System

Credit Suisse Stock Plunges To Record Low As Bank Concerns Grow (Forbes)

Another Bank Shutdown, Signature Bank Closed, Barney Frank of Infamous Barney Frank Legislation on Board

Economic Meltdown Looming

Investor Carl Icahn Issues Grim Warning on US Economy

BIDEN’S ECONOMY: Silicon Valley Bank COLLAPSES Following Run on Bank, 2nd Biggest Bank Failure In United States History

Biden’s Budget & Who Will Actually Pay Most in Income Taxes? thumbnail

Biden’s Budget & Who Will Actually Pay Most in Income Taxes?

/in , , , /by

By Royal A. Brown III

Biden and the Left have spent decades claiming that high-income households don’t pay their “fair share” of taxes. The Biden budget’s signature policy is a tax hike based on that assertion. This is a total lie.

Once again, reality says otherwise.

The top 1% of households pay more income tax than the bottom 90% combined and pay roughly twice as much in taxes relative to their share of income. The lie dispelled.

The Left never defines what “fair share” means, other than “more,” and they typically want to use that “more” to cover spending increases.

It’s crucial for Americans to understand that raising taxes on businesses and entrepreneurs would not only damage economic growth and private investment, but it would also utterly fail to generate enough revenue to satisfy the Left’s agenda. Raising Taxes on businesses and corporations means rising prices on goods and services as they are forced to pass these higher costs on to consumers! Yes – raising taxes never leads to decreasing spending and the debt continues rising.

European-style government with cradle-to-grave benefits would require European-style taxes, and that would mean hammering the middle class with tax hikes. Yes, this is exactly what will happen.

The Biden administration on Thursday released an outline for its fiscal year 2024 budget. As expected, it promotes the same swampy, big-government agenda as last year, which the country desperately needs to avoid.

Beneath the administration’s spin, the ultimate message is that it thinks the federal government doesn’t have enough power and control over our families and businesses.

These charts, based on updated information from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, show just how off-base Biden’s narrative is and why America needs exactly the opposite from its leaders.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW INFOGRAPHIC: GROWING SPENDING IS THE PROBLEM

For more than 50 years prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, federal spending averaged a whisker over 20% of the economy. That temporarily spiked above 30% in 2020 and 2021 due to the immense (and extremely wasteful) spending spree by Congress.

The country is on course to return to that excessive level of spending without war, recession, or a pandemic as the underlying cause. Merely maintaining the status quo of allowing benefit and cronyistic programs to grow faster than the economy will make “emergency” levels of spending the new normal.

A relatively short exposure to firehose-style spending helped drive inflation through the roof. We can only imagine what would happen if that’s allowed to become permanent reality.

Incredibly, the Biden budget would increase spending above the baseline by $1.85 trillion over the next decade, making the problem even worse. It envisions a mindboggling $10 trillion in spending by 2033.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW INFOGRAPHIC: U.S. BUDET VS. FAMILY BUDGET

The raw numbers involved with federal budgeting are impossible to fully comprehend, which makes charts such as these so important.

In fiscal year 2022, the federal deficit was the equivalent of nearly $20,000 for a middle-class family. To carry the analogy further, this family would already be more than $447,000 in debt, but with no new assets to show for it.

Any family with such an unbalanced budget would be bankrupt in no time flat. We shouldn’t assume that the nation can avoid a similar fate for much longer.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW INFOGRAPHIC: INTEREST COSTS A MAJOR BURDEN

It has been incredibly reckless for Washington insiders to assume low interest rates would be around forever. With interest rates rising, the country is faced with the prospect of dedicating more than $1 trillion dollars per year to interest payments by the end of the decade, and trillions more per year not too long after that.

Servicing the federal debt will soon be an anchor dragging on the economy, steadily eroding the growth and prosperity that we take for granted. Any attempt to artificially push interest rates down would threaten to make inflation worse, squeezing families from both sides.

CLICK HER TO VIEW INFOGRAPHIC: DRIVERS OF GROWING SPENDING

Federal spending is projected to grow much faster than the economy. Of that incredible growth, a full 79% would arise from net interest payments, Social Security, and Medicare.

Too many politicians want to either ignore this reality, or—like Biden—pretend that the solution is to raise taxes while refusing to take any meaningful action to reform key benefit programs with long-term stability in mind.

Incredibly, Biden is proposing a whopping $4.7 trillion tax increase in the budget plan, or more than $35,000 per household.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW INFORGRAPHIC: UNSUSTAINABLE BUDGET DEFICITS

Biden and his staffers love to brag about the 2022 deficit being lower than it was in 2020. This talking point is, frankly, misinformation. Biden’s decisions have consistently made things worse.

Further, the 2022 deficit was still well above the historical average. Unless something changes, deficits will be twice the historical average by 2029 and keep climbing from there.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW INFOGRAPHIC: DO THE RICH PAY THEIR ‘FAIR SHARE’?

Biden and the Left have spent decades claiming that high-income households don’t pay their “fair share” of taxes. The Biden budget’s signature policy is a tax hike based on that assertion.

Once again, reality says otherwise. The top 1% of households pay more income tax than the bottom 90% combined and pay roughly twice as much in taxes relative to their share of income.

The Left never defines what “fair share” means, other than “more,” and they typically want to use that “more” to cover spending increases.

It’s crucial for Americans to understand that raising taxes on businesses and entrepreneurs would not only damage economic growth and private investment, but it would also utterly fail to generate enough revenue to satisfy the Left’s agenda.

The harsh reality is that a European-style government with cradle-to-grave benefits would require European-style taxes, and that would mean hammering the middle class with tax hikes.

A proper solution to federal finances, such as that of The Heritage Foundation’s Budget Blueprint, would focus on shrinking bloated bureaucracies and reforming programs such as Medicare in a way that treats both older and younger Americans fairly.

In contrast, Biden’s budget would leave future generations with crushing burdens of debt and taxation. More than merely rejecting this bleak vision for the country, Congress must go in the opposite direction if we are to have any hope.

The Daily Signal depends on the support of readers like you. Donate now

Have an opinion about this article? To sound off, please email letters@DailySignal.com and we’ll consider publishing your edited remarks in our regular “We Hear You” feature. Remember to include the url or headline of the article plus your name and town and/or state.

©Royal A. Brown III. All rights reserved.

‘Economic Meltdown’ Looming On Monday, March 13th thumbnail

‘Economic Meltdown’ Looming On Monday, March 13th

/in , , , , /by

By Dr. Rich Swier

Bill Ackman predicted the lack of government intervention to guarantee SVB FDIC insured deposits would lead to an ‘economic collapse.’

Risks include:

1. Depositors at small banks move to JP Morgan
2. Everyone moves from cash to treasuries & money markets
3. Bank assets are no longer backed by deposits
4. More runs on banks
5. Socialists cheer on demise of small banks
6. Execs at big banks get mega rich

‘Irreversible mistake’: Hedge fund manager Bill Ackman warns of ‘economic meltdown’ following Silicon Valley Bank collapse

By Jesse O’Neill, NY Post, March 12, 2023:

Hedge-fund manager Bill Ackman predicted that an “economic meltdown” was looming on Monday following Friday’s collapse of Silicon Valley Bank.

In a rambling, 649-word, one-paragraph tweet Saturday, the billionaire predicted that uninsured bank customers would rush to withdraw cash Monday unless the government steps in to guarantee their funds and “fix a-soon-to-be-irreversible mistake.”

The 16th largest bank in the US, which provided financing for a large chunk of the country’s venture backed tech and health companies, was taken over by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Friday as its stock plummeted due to liquidity concerns tied to rising interest rates.

It marked the largest bank collapse since the 2008 financial crisis, and it stranded billions of dollars belonging to companies and investors, whose deposits in excess of $250,000 are not covered by the FDIC.
Bill Ackman, the founder and CEO of Pershing Square Capital Management in Manhattan, predicted the lack of government intervention to guarantee SVB funds would lead to an ‘economic collapse.’
Bloomberg via Getty Images

“Absent @jpmorgan@citi or @BankofAmerica acquiring SVB before the open on Monday, a prospect I believe to be unlikely, or the gov’t guaranteeing all of SVB’s deposits, the giant sucking sound you will hear will be the withdrawal of substantially all uninsured deposits from all but the ‘systemically important banks’ (SIBs),” Ackman wrote.

The FDIC was said to be looking to find a bank that would merge with the failed California institution over the weekend, as the US weight the creation of a fund that would allow regulators to reinforce deposits if other banks fail in the wake of the collapse, according to Bloomberg.

Read more.

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

RELATED TWEETS:

So let’s understand, the Biden regime is sending HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS to a corrupt dictatorship (that launders money for the Democrat criminal racket)
but they won’t cover the failed FDIC bank deposits in a bank run caused by Biden’s catastrophic economic polices. #SVBCollapse

— 🇺🇸 Pamela Geller 🇺🇸 (@PamelaGeller) March 12, 2023

Hi, I’m Lindsey. A bit about me:
– Ohio mother of 4
– I employ a team of 15 as a start-up founder & CEO of Strongsuit
– drive a used Honda Odessey
– husband works in manufacturing
– The financial future of my company, team and family are at risk w/ the collapse of SVB (1/23)

— Lindsey Michaelides (@lcmichaelides) March 11, 2023

RELATED ARTICLES:

America’s biggest banks lost more than $50 billion in a single day

BIDEN’S ECONOMY: Silicon Valley Bank COLLAPSES Following Run on Bank, 2nd Biggest Bank Failure In United States History

America’s Biggest Banks Lost More Than 50 billion Dollars In A Single Day

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Hillary Clinton Calls for Increased Military Aid to Ukraine – Damn Good Reason Not To Do So thumbnail

Hillary Clinton Calls for Increased Military Aid to Ukraine – Damn Good Reason Not To Do So

/in , , , , /by

By Royal A. Brown III

A damn good reason for not sending more $BILLIONS and warfighting equipment to Ukraine is that Hillary Clinton says we should send more including F-16 fighters and long range missiles (capable of hitting targets inside of Russia).

‘So Inspiring To Me’: Hillary Clinton Calls For Increased Military Aid For Ukraine

By DYLAN HOUSMAN

Former secretary of state, senator and first lady Hillary Clinton called for increased military aid to Ukraine in a “Morning Joe” interview excerpt that aired Friday on MSNBC.

Clinton was interviewed alongside Ukrainian First Lady Olena Zelenska, who is in the United Arab Emirates, a country that has resisted Western sanctions and has continued to provide diplomatic and economic support to Moscow since Russia invaded Ukraine in Feb. 2022. Host Joe Scarborough asked Clinton about the Ukrainian people’s fight for values like democracy and freedom.

.@HillaryClinton: Ukraine’s war-fighting “is so inspiring to me. I hope it is inspiring to every American, particularly those in positions to make decisions. Because we have to continue, and I would even argue, increase the military support that we give the Ukrainians” pic.twitter.com/WbZuPI9sXE

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) March 10, 2023

“It’s so inspiring to me, and I hope it is inspiring to every American, particularly those in positions to make decisions,” Clinton responded. “Because we have to continue, and I would even argue increase, the military support that we give to the Ukrainians sooner.”

Scarborough interjected to ask whether or not that increased military support should include F-16 fighter jets.

“It includes air cover, it includes long-range missiles, it includes much more defensive systems, and not just from us but from our NATO allies and others,” Clinton replied.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has consistently requested F-16s from Western countries since the war began, but has not received any so far. President Joe Biden said recently that F-16s for Ukraine are off the table “for now,” and other officials have expressed that they don’t believe the jets are the most important aid Ukraine could be receiving for the current stage of the conflict.

Last weekend, two Ukrainian pilots were in Arizona to receive evaluations on F-16 simulators for potential future training purposes, defense officials said.

Clinton and Zelenska’s full interview with “Morning Joe” is set to air Monday morning.

©Royal A. Brown III. All rights reserved.

RELATED ARTICLE: Russia Routing US-Made Weapons Captured In Ukraine To Iran For Reverse Engineering: REPORT

BIDEN’S NEW TAX HELL: Proposes $5.5 TRILLION in Tax Hikes, LARGEST TAX INCREASE in History thumbnail

BIDEN’S NEW TAX HELL: Proposes $5.5 TRILLION in Tax Hikes, LARGEST TAX INCREASE in History

/in , , , , , /by

By The Geller Report

Make no mistake, this massive tax hike will it every single America and most of all our savings. Biden is raising capital gains tax from 20% to 40%, imposing a tax on unrealized gains, huge increases on two income families, but hit worst of all, small business.

Biden’s titanic tax hikes are only exceeded by his spending.

Even with $5 trillion in tax hikes bringing the highest sustained tax burden America has ever seen, the public-held national debt would still jump from $25 trillion to $44 trillion according to the president’s own figures.

Annual budget deficits would grow past $2 trillion even with peace and prosperity.

Simply paying the interest on the national debt would cost taxpayers $10 trillion over the decade — more than any program besides Social Security and Medicare.

Apart from crashing the stock market, it will impoverish savers, homeowners and stock-holders.

It’s a deathblow to the American economy.

Biden’s $5 trillion tax blowout still leaves soaring red ink

By 

President Biden’s budget request is meant to drive headlines showcasing a claimed $3 trillion in deficit reduction over the next decade.

In reality, his budget proposes the largest tax increase in modern history, plows much of the new savings into more new spending and leaves Social Security on its path to insolvency.

Start with taxes.

Inflation-adjusted federal revenues have already soared to $1 trillion above pre-pandemic levels, to their second-highest share of the economy since World War II.

Yet the president would raise taxes by an additional $5 trillion over the decade — the largest tax hike since the 1960s.

Total revenues would approach 20% of the economy, and income-tax revenues would average 10% of the economy over the decade.

Both would represent the highest sustained tax burdens in American history.

America’s businesses would bear much of the tax burden.

Total corporate taxes would jump by 56%, to their highest sustained share of the economy since the 1970s (and may exceed the 1970s levels when also accounting for small-business taxes).

Much of these revenues would come from raising the corporate tax rate from 21% to 28%.

When including state taxes, American corporations would face the second-highest tax burden among Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development nations.

In a world of global tax competition, America would again hamstring its own competitiveness.

One could defend steep tax increases if accompanied by equal spending savings as part of a balanced plan to combat Washington’s trillion-dollar deficits.

Read more.

Biden proposes $5.5 TRILLION in tax hikes on the rich to pay for $6.8T budget that includes pay raise for federal workers and funding for green agenda

  • The budget proposes a 7.3 percent increase in non-defense discretionary spending – about double its increase in defense spending
  • It calls for $688B in non-defense discretionary spending – a $47B increase
  • Calls for $886 billion to be allocated to overall defense – an increase over 2023’s $858 billion

By Morgan Phillips, U.S. Political Reporter and Emily Goodin, Senior U.S. Political Reporter For Dailymail.com

President Joe Biden on Thursday released a $6.8 trillion budget that puts higher taxes on the rich, targets corporations and gives a huge injection of funding for social programs such as child care and paid family leave.

The plan includes raking in $5.5 trillion in tax revenues from the wealthiest Americans by raising the top rate for those making more than $400,000 from 39.6 percent from 37 percent and imposing a 25 percent minimum income tax on billionaires.

The president’s plan – which he says will reduce the deficit by $3 trillion over 10 years – would also nearly double the capital gains tax rate for investment to 39.6 percent from 20 percent and raise income levies on corporations.

Enough for the largest peacetime budget in history has also been proposed – including $842 billion for the Pentagon, a 5.2 percent pay rise for troops, $6 billion in support for Ukraine and Europe and $37 billion on the nuclear weapons program.

There are also billions set aside for a 5.2 percent pay rise for federal workers, support for refugees, more offshore wind farms and a $25 billion investment in border security.

The huge budget is likely to be blocked in Congress, and Republicans have already called the plan ‘reckless’ and a ‘road map to fiscal ruin’.

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

RELATED TWEETS:

Inflation was 1.4% when Biden took office. Now it’s 6.4%.

So how is President Biden going to help? By proposing a budget that calls for $6.8 trillion dollars in spending that even his tax increases can’t cover.

That’s not going to “whip” inflation, that’s going to feed it. pic.twitter.com/omUpCK0ZxS

— Heritage Foundation (@Heritage) March 9, 2023

President Biden just delivered his budget to Congress, and it is completely unserious.

He proposes trillions in new taxes that you and your family will pay directly or through higher costs.

Mr. President: Washington has a spending problem, NOT a revenue problem.

— Kevin McCarthy (@SpeakerMcCarthy) March 9, 2023

Biden’s New Tax Plan Would Raise Combined Top Tax Rates to Nearly 60% in Some States

“That means if you live in California, your combined state and federal would be 57.9%. And if you live in New York City, the city, state and federal would all add up to a top rate of 59.4%.” pic.twitter.com/iOnRrqe6Gq

— Chief Nerd (@TheChiefNerd) March 8, 2023

BIDEN: “I wanna make it clear: I’m gonna raise some taxes” pic.twitter.com/m1g8c8jhEs

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) February 28, 2023

NEW: Massive line forms outside Silicon Valley Bank in California as customers panic.

Welcome to Biden’s America. It will only get worse.pic.twitter.com/MNCQuKIc9h

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) March 10, 2023

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Cori Bush Campaign Paid Antisemitic Spiritual Guru $$Thousands for ‘Security Services’ thumbnail

Cori Bush Campaign Paid Antisemitic Spiritual Guru $$Thousands for ‘Security Services’

/in , , , , /by

By Discover The Networks

Breitbart News reports that corrupt radical Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO), who has a history of supporting the Defund the Police movement, reportedly paid an “anti-Semitic spiritual guru” to provide her with “security services.”

Nathaniel Davis appears to be the highest-paid independent person for “security services” for the Bush campaign. Davis received $137,000 from Bush since 2020, surpassing her now-husband Cortney Merritts, who also provided “security services” for the congresswoman despite not having a private security license.

A report from the Washington Free Beacon revealed that Davis, a former member of the rabidly anti-Semitic New Black Panther Party, is also a spiritual guru known as Aha Sen Piankhy. Davis claims to be 109 trillion-years-old, teaches classes on how to read minds and summon mythical beings, and maintains an urban garden so he doesn’t have to buy food from the Jews he thinks control the world.

The Free Beacon report noted that Davis spends his time teaching St. Louis’s black community to grow their own food, so they can “liberate themselves from a genocidal Jewish cabal that runs the world.”

Interestingly, Bush listed her campaign headquarters’ address for the majority of her payments to Davis, a move the Free Beacon suspects Bush made to conceal Davis’s identity in her campaign spending reports.

The Free Beacon reviewed Bush’s personal Facebook page and confirmed that she is friends with “Aha Davis Zadok El,” one of Davis’s Facebook accounts. Davis claims to be a member of the “Priesthood of the Sun Moon Sect” across several of his social media accounts.

Why is the corrupt, racist, antisemitic Cori Bush still in Congress?

Cori Bush

78 Known Connections

Condemning America As a Land of Oppression & “White Supremacy”

On July 4, 2021, Bush condemned America in a tweet that said: “This land is stolen land and Black people still aren’t free.” In a separate tweet, she stated: “We know what our own freedom looks like. End the slavery permitted under the 13th amendment. End the War on Drugs. End police violence. End health care, housing, and education apartheid, WE are the experts on our own liberation. And we won’t stop until it’s won.”
The next day, Bush tweeted: “It’s not a coincidence that the people who are saying Black people have full freedom in our country are the same ones trying to prevent teaching the truth about white supremacy in our classrooms.”

To learn more about Cori Bush, click here.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Hillary: ‘We Have Seen Organized Pushback to the Advancement of Women’ After COVID

Adams: Border Czar Kamala Has ‘Too Much in Her Portfolio’ to Deal with Illegal Immigration

Steinem: We Won’t Have Equality Until Men Are Raising Children as Much as Women Are

EDITORS NOTE: This Discover the Networks column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Cost Study: Illegal Immigration Now Costs American Taxpayers At Least $151 Billion a Year thumbnail

Cost Study: Illegal Immigration Now Costs American Taxpayers At Least $151 Billion a Year

/in , , , , , /by

By Federation for American Immigration Reform

Washington, D.C. — A new report by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) finds that, as of 2022, American taxpayers shell out at least $151 billion each year to cover the cost of illegal immigration. Broken down, the data reveals that taxpayers pay $182 billion annually to provide services and benefits to illegal aliens and their dependents. These costs are offset by about $31 billion in taxes that are collected from the estimated 15.5 million illegal aliens living in the United States, bringing the net cost to $150.7 billion annually.

  • At the start of 2023, the net cost of illegal immigration for the United States – at the federal, state, and local levels – was at least $150.7 billion.
  • FAIR arrived at this number by subtracting the tax revenue paid by illegal aliens – just under $32 billion – from the gross negative economic impact of illegal immigration, $182 billion.
  • In 2017, the estimated net cost of illegal migration was approximately $116 billion. In just 5 years, the cost to Americans has increased by nearly $35 billion.
  • Illegal immigration costs each American taxpayer $1,156 per year.
  • Each illegal alien or U.S.-born child of illegal aliens costs the U.S. $8,776 annually.
  • Evidence shows that tax payments by illegal aliens cover only around a sixth of the costs they create at all levels in this country.
  • A large percentage of illegal aliens who work in the underground economy frequently avoid paying any income tax at all.
  • Many illegal aliens actually receive a net cash profit through refundable tax credit programs.

The 2022 costs represent a 30 percent increase to taxpayers in just five years. A former version of this study, conducted in 2017 by FAIR, placed the annual net cost of illegal immigration at $116 billion. Most of the additional costs have been added in the past two years, as the Biden administration’s de facto open borders policies have triggered a historic surge of new illegal migrants pouring across our borders. Moreover, the updated price tag of $151 billion is a conservative estimate as there are additional costs incurred from illegal immigration, but there is currently insufficient data to provide reliable cost estimates.

FAIR’s comprehensive analysis looks at available federal, state, and local programs and services that are directly accessible to illegal aliens, or indirectly, through their U.S.-born children who qualify for all means-tested programs. In addition to the surge of illegal immigration since 2021, state and local governments have offered a variety of new benefits and services to illegal aliens, which have exacerbated the situation for struggling taxpayers.

Among the key findings in FAIR’s report, The Fiscal Burden of Illegal Immigration on United States Taxpayers:

  • The gross annual cost of illegal immigration (the total amount before taxes paid by illegal aliens are factored in) is now $182 billion, annually.
  • Taxes paid by illegal aliens only cover around 17.2 percent of the costs they create for American citizens, bringing the net cost to $150.7 billion a year.
  • The largest component of the cost is K-12 education, which must be provided under a 1982 Supreme Court ruling. The annual K-12 education cost for illegal aliens (and their U.S.-born children) is $78 billion, of which $70.4 billion is borne by states and localities.
  • Health care for illegal aliens costs taxpayers about $42.7 billion annually.
  • A variety of food assistance and nutritional programs used by illegal aliens and their children cost taxpayers about $13.5 billion annually.
  • Combined federal, state, and local criminal justice costs associated with illegal immigration run about $47 billion annually – not including the cost of damages to victims.

“As America struggles to meet countless societal needs while facing the realities of our staggering $31 trillion national debt, the costs of providing for millions of people who have no legal right to be in the United States continues to grow at an alarming rate,” commented Dan Stein, president of FAIR. “To be clear, most of this enormous financial burden has been inflicted on taxpayers by the open borders advocates at every level of government. Not only is the Biden administration refusing to rein-in illegal immigration or remove the people who are breaking our laws, they are promulgating policies that actually encourage more of it while offering new protections and benefits to those who settle here illegally. Likewise, a growing number of states and localities create their own costly magnets for illegal aliens by declaring themselves sanctuaries and offering new benefits and services. This has to stop.”

“The American people viscerally understand that no nation can flourish without controlling its borders and enforcing its immigration laws. The purpose of this report is to provide them with the true costs of these ruinous policies — $150.7 billion a year and growing with no inclination on the part of the current administration to address the problem,” Stein concluded.

EDITORS NOTE: This FAIR Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

The Greatest Ripoff in American History: Democrats Spent $100 Billion of Your Money on Climate Hoax thumbnail

The Greatest Ripoff in American History: Democrats Spent $100 Billion of Your Money on Climate Hoax

/in , , , , , , , /by

By The Geller Report

You have to wonder what its going to take for Americans to wake up to the party of treason.

Is this the greatest ripoff in American history?

America has spent $100 billion of your money on climate change. How’s that working out?

By Stephen Moore | NY Sun, March 7, 2023:

Biden admin internal climate agenda memo leaked

Former U.S. Homeland Security Adviser Dr. Julia Nesheiwat joined ‘Fox & Friends Weekend’ to discuss what the leaked climate memo indicates about the Biden administration’s priorities.
NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!

For at least the last 20 years, politicians in Washington, at the behest of green energy groups, have spent some $100 billion of taxpayer money to fight climate change and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. How is that going for us so far?

A recent Associated Press story, based on the latest data on global carbon emissions, provides a pretty accurate report card: “Carbon Dioxide Emissions Reached a Record High in 2022.”

The article tells us: “Communities around the world emitted more carbon dioxide in 2022 than in any other year on records dating to 1900, a result of air travel rebounding from the pandemic and more cities turning to coal as a low-cost source of power. Emissions of the climate-warming gas that were caused by energy production grew 0.9% to reach 36.8 gigatons in 2022, the International Energy Agency reported Thursday. (The mass of one gigaton is equivalent to about 10,000 fully loaded aircraft carriers, according to NASA.)”
placeholder

You’ve got to almost shriek out loud when you read this line: “Thursday’s (IEA) report was described as disconcerting by climate scientists.”

“Disconcerting”? That’s putting it lightly. We are the furthest thing from being climate change alarmists, but when you spend $100 billion of taxpayer money and achieve absolutely nothing, President Joe Biden and his green allies should be arrested for criminal fraud.

Where did all the money go? Tens of billions of dollars have lined the pockets of left-wing environmental and social justice groups that have been emitting a lot of hot air but no results. Green energy companies have milked taxpayers of tens of billions more.

Where did all the money go? Tens of billions of dollars have lined the pockets of left-wing environmental and social justice groups that have been emitting a lot of hot air but no results. Green energy companies have milked taxpayers of tens of billions more, even as wind and solar only produce about 12% of our energy.

Is this the greatest ripoff of U.S. taxpayers in history?

Keep reading.

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

RELATED ARTICLES:

GOING BLACK, NOT GREEN: Curbing U.S. Oil, Gas Production Would Hurt the Environment, Report Finds

Socialists Cheer Dem State’s Climate Bill Mandating Fossil Fuel Shutdown: ‘Will Transform New York’

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

IRS Allows Islamic Terrorists to Fundraise Through Leftist Nonprofit thumbnail

IRS Allows Islamic Terrorists to Fundraise Through Leftist Nonprofit

/in , , , , , , /by

By Jihad Watch

Rabbi Eitan Shnerb was hiking to a spring with his son Dvir and his daughter Rina when the bomb went off. For a moment, as he described it in the hospital, everything went black. Then, badly wounded, he saw that the two teenagers were bleeding. Rabbi Shnerb was a trained paramedic. He saw that Rina, his 17-year-old daughter, had absorbed most of the blast. He kissed her on the forehead. And then he turned his Tzizit, the biblical garment that Orthodox Jewish men wear, into a tourniquet for his 19-year-old son to stop the bleeding.

 Dvir told his father that he couldn’t breathe and passed out. His daughter was already dead.

“I wanted to believe it was just a dream,” Rabbi Shnerb said from his hospital bed. “I have experienced several bombs in my life and been saved, thank God, but this one got us,..I immediately called to Rina, shouting ‘Rina, Rina,’ I looked down and saw that she was not alive.”

Rabbi Shnerb had stopped a terrorist attack earlier this year by two armed attackers. This time he had not seen the explosion coming.

The terrorist group behind the 2019 terrorist attack was the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. And the IRS is accused of allowing it to fundraise through a leftist nonprofit group.

One name that keeps coming up in the Freedom Center’s investigations of nonprofits is the Alliance for Global Justice. AFGJ was spun off from the Nicaragua Network which had been set up to support the Sandinista Marxist terror regime. It went on to operate the Venezuela Solidarity Campaign in support of the narcosocialist Maduro regime in that country.

While the IRS has harassed pro-Israel groups and interrogated them about their views, it has apparently never found the time to ask the AFGJ about its support for enemy nations. It currently features a commemoration of Chavez’s legacy in support of a regime whose bosses are wanted criminals for their role in a cartel smuggling cocaine into the United States.

AFGJ’s backers include George Soros, Tides, the Ben and Jerry’s Foundation, and other wealthy leftists, and it has used its status as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit to offer fiscal sponsorship to some of the worst of the worst close to home. The 130 groups it sponsors include several Black Lives Matter chapters, the Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition in support of a cop killer, pro-illegal alien groups, as well as several brail funds whose mission is freeing rioters and criminals.

Some of these groups might not be able to obtain nonprofit status on their own, but benefit from the fiscal sponsorship of the Alliance for Global Justice.which allows them to accept tax-deductible contributions. When Refuse Fascism, a group linked by some to Antifa and which has defended Antifa violence, solicits donations, it does so using the Action Network, a platform utilized by both Antifa and the DNC, and directs tax-deductible donations through AFGJ.

The same is true of the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network which asks supporters to direct checks to AFGJ. Samidoun does not bother to disguise what it is. It describes terrorists as “resistance fighters” and “martyrs”, and urges support for the “resistance”. The cheerleading for terrorists is accompanied by a call, “Make your US tax-deductible donation today, and donate safely and securely from around the world.”

The AFGJ states that, “Fiscal sponsorship services are offered to grassroots non-profits that agree with the AFGJ vision and mission statements.” Does that include terrorists?

After the murder of Rina Shnerb, Israel arrested members of a PFLP terror network embedded inside nonprofit groups. Israel designated Samidoun as a subsidiary of the PFLP terrorist organization. Multiple PFLP figures have been accused of serving leadership roles in Samidoun including its executive director, former vice chair, and multiple coordinators.

PayPal, MasterCard, Visa and other financial services have cut off access to Samidoun and the latest also cut off AFGJ. Currently, AFGJ and its various sponsorees warn donors that they can only take paper checks.

“AfGJ cannot accept credit donations—and neither can the 140 organizations that rely on AfGJ to provide them with fiscal sponsorship,” the leftist group cautions.

While AFGJ is running low on online sites willing to process donations to them, the IRS has yet to take any action. The Zachor Legal Institute, a pro-Israel group fighting BDS, filed an IRS complaint and directed a letter to the DOJ noting that the “PFLP has built a financial system supported by an infrastructure of the Seven PFLP Proxies who raise money on various humanitarian pretexts” while “directing money to the PFLP.”

And yet the odds of the IRS taking action are slim. Even though the PFLP was designated as one of the terrorist groups listed by President George W. Bush after September 11, it was less difficult for Zachor and conservative media to persuade financial services companies to stop processing donations for AFGJ than to get the IRS to enforce tax code regulations and the law.

AFGJ informed the IRS that its mission is to “achieve social change and economic justice”. In reality it has helped unleash violence at home and abroad. The beneficiaries include BLM’s Louisville Community Bail Fund which bailed out Quintez Brown, a Black Lives Matter activist, who walked into the campaign office of a Louisville political candidate and opened fire.

While payment processors have cut off the Alliance for Global Justice, the IRS has yet to act. After over two decades, the IRS has shown no interest in taking action even as the AFGJ continues to act as a fiscal sponsor for groups that would not qualify for nonprofit status. The fiscal sponsorship loophole continues to be abused to fund everything including terrorism.

The Freedom Center’s pamphlet, Internal Radical Service by David Horowitz and John Perazzo, has exposed how the IRS routinely allows leftist nonprofits to violate tax codes and the law. The fiscal sponsorship loophole is widely used by radical leftists to make illegal activity tax deductible. Tax code regulations state that “exempt purposes may generally be equated with the public good, and violations of law are the antithesis of the public good”. They warn that, “violation of constitutionally valid laws is inconsistent with exemption under IRC 501(c)(3)” and that “planned activities that violate laws are not in furtherance of a charitable purpose”.

Terrorism is one of the most blatant possible examples of behavior at odds with the public good.

While the IRS is warning waiters to report their tips, it allows terrorists to benefit from tax deductible money. Payment processors have shown that they have a higher level of compliance with the law than the IRS. When the IRS refuses to enforce the law while demanding that everyone abide by it, that is a culture of lawlessness and, in this case, it’s costing lives.

AUTHOR

DANIEL GREENFIELD

RELATED ARTICLES:

IAEA top dog says attack on Iran’s nuclear program would be illegal, Netanyahu fires back

Is the Islamic Republic of Iran really only days away from making a nuclear bomb?

UK: Kids at Islamic Republic of Iran Primary School in London pledge to join apocalyptic conflict against infidels

Turkey: Pop star faces three years in prison for criticizing Islamic schools

Order David Horowitz’s and John Perazzo’s new booklet: “Internal Radical Service: Abuse Of Taxpayer Dollars To Advance Leftwing Causes Illegally And Unconstitutionally”: CLICK HERE.

EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. All rights reserved.

CLIMATE HOAX: Biden’s EPA Has Paid Out $1 Billion Into Climate Grants This Year thumbnail

CLIMATE HOAX: Biden’s EPA Has Paid Out $1 Billion Into Climate Grants This Year

/in , , , , , , /by

By The Geller Report

It’s all one giant scam. The climate grift is the greatest political fraud in history.

Back in 1971, the great American political theorist, Ayn Rand, wrote in her book. “The Return of the Primitive” , “It has been reported in the press many times that the issue of ‘pollution’ is to be the next big crusade of the New Left activists, after the war in Vietnam peters out. And just as peace was not their goal or motive in that crusade, so clean air is not their goal or motive in this one.”

Boom.

Biden’s EPA Has Paid Out $1 Billion Into Climate Grants This Year

By Liz Sheld, American Greatness, March 2, 2023

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced over $250 million in grants are available to fund plans for projects combating “climate pollution” on Wednesday, pushing the total number of climate grants announced this year to nearly $1 billion.

The funds include $3 million for every state, $1 million for each of the 67 most populated metropolitan areas and a total of $25 million to be distributed among Native American tribes, according to the EPA press release. The grants are among the first in President Joe Biden’s new $5 billion Climate Pollution Reduction Grants (CPRG) program, which was created by the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).

In total, the IRA allocated nearly $370 billion to fighting climate change. The act also includes, among other things, $80 million in additional funding for the Internal Revenue Service, $2o billion in incentives for farmers to not grow crops and $2.2 billion in reparations for black farmers.

“We know that tackling the climate crisis demands a sense of urgency to protect people and the planet,” said EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan in a statement. “President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act is a historic opportunity to provide communities across the country with the resources they need to protect people from harmful climate pollution and improve our economy. These Climate Pollution Reduction Grants are an important first step to equip communities with the resources to create innovative strategies that reduce climate emissions and drive benefits across the country.”

The first $250 million from EPA’s new Climate Pollution Reduction Grants is now available! Thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act, we are providing resources for states, local governments, Tribes, and territories to cut climate pollution and build clean energy economies. pic.twitter.com/9VL1jbk9CR

— U.S. EPA (@EPA) March 1, 2023

Keep reading.

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

RELATED ARTICLES:

World’s top climate scientists told to ‘cover up’ the fact that the Earth’s temperature hasn’t risen for the last 15 years

Reuters Science Correspondent: “I was wrong” on Climate

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

AOC Likely Violated Federal Law With Met Gala Theatrics, Congressional Ethics Office Says thumbnail

AOC Likely Violated Federal Law With Met Gala Theatrics, Congressional Ethics Office Says

/in , , , , /by

By The Daily Caller

The Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE) said Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York may have violated “standards of conduct” and “federal law” over “impermissible gifts” relating to her appearance at the 2021 Met Gala, according to a release by the House Ethics Committee.

“Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez may have accepted impermissible gifts associated with her attendance at the Met Gala in 2021,” the OCE report said. “If Rep. Ocasio-Cortez accepted impermissible gifts, then she may have violated House rules, standards of conduct, and federal law.”

🚨BREAKING: The Office of Congressional Ethics has released a statement in which they say there is “substantial reason to believe” AOC “accepted impermissible associated with her attendance at the Met Gala in 2021” that violated “standards of conduct and federal law.” pic.twitter.com/cR215TfY6J

— Greg Price (@greg_price11) March 2, 2023

Ocasio-Cortez wore a dress with the words “Tax the Rich” on it during the ritzy gala in September 2021, drawing an ethics complaint accusing her of improperly accepting free tickets to the event, which reportedly start at $35,000. Members of the House of Representatives may accept gifts of either “nominal value” or from relatives and friends, but any gift over $250 requires written permission from the House Ethics Committee.

“While regrettable, this matter definitively does not rise to the level of a violation of House Rules or of federal law,” an attorney for Rep. Ocasio-Cortez wrote to the House Ethics Committee.

“Though no Ethics violation has been found, the Office of Congressional Ethics (“OCE”) did identify that there were delays in paying vendors for costs associated with the Congresswoman’s attendance at the Met Gala,” Ocasio-Cortez’s office said in a statement to the Daily Caller News Foundation. “The Congresswoman finds these delays unacceptable, and she has taken several steps to ensure nothing of this nature will happen again.”

This is a breaking news story and will be updated.

AUTHOR

HAROLD HUTCHISON

Reporter.

RELATED ARTICLE: Ocasio-Cortez Touts ‘Working Class’ Background During Vogue Interview At Lavish Met Gala

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

American Fighting for Ukraine Defects to Russia, Blows Whistle on Nazism, War Crimes thumbnail

American Fighting for Ukraine Defects to Russia, Blows Whistle on Nazism, War Crimes

/in , , , , /by

By The Geller Report

An American Army veteran who spent a year fighting in Ukraine’s Foreign Legion has defected to Russia, bringing with him tangible evidence and first-hand accounts of widespread Ukrainian Nazism and war crimes.

John McIntyre joined Ukraine’s Foreign Legion, before learning they were Nazi war criminals and defecting to Russia.

By Frankie Stockes, National File, March 1, 2023:

An American Army veteran who spent a year fighting in Ukraine’s Foreign Legion has defected to Russia, bringing with him tangible evidence and first-hand accounts of widespread Ukrainian Nazism and war crimes. He also says that Americans are on the ground in Ukraine, communicating directly with CIA handlers as they help coordinate attacks on Russian troops.

John McIntyre, an American southerner and US Army veteran who joined others from around the world in soliciting his services to the Ukrainian Foreign Legion has defected to Russia and described the war crimes and open Nazism he witnessed in NATO-backed Ukraine during an exclusive sit-down interview with RT in Moscow.

“When I came [to Ukraine],” McIntyre told RT, “I was really surprised. Everybody had tattoos and Nazi symbolism.”

When he was asked by the Ukrainians why he was fighting in the war as a foreigner, he told them that he was there to stand up against Russian “Nazis” and “fascists,” only to be told that “the Russians aren’t the Nazis, we are the Nazis,” by his Ukrainian comrades and other neo-fascists who poured into the fight from all over Europe.

McIntyre told RT that he personally knew foreign fighters who had committed war crimes by executing Russian prisoners and that others had committed hideous acts of torture, something he says the Ukrainians and their foreign comrades like to laugh and joke about.

“A lot of captured Russian soldiers, they’ll take and cut their genitalia with a knife and everything and cut their stomachs open, slit their throats, cut their heads off and stuff like that. Really horrible stuff,” said McIntyre.

And it isn’t just Russian soldiers who have fallen victim to Ukrainian war crimes. Civilians, McIntyre said, have been targeted by the Ukrainians in pro-Russian separatist regions like the Donbas, and civilian homes and community centers, like schools, are routinely used as shields.

While McIntyre told RT that he was acting as a “spy” against the Ukrainians the entire time he was there, it’s unclear if this is actually true, or if he became disillusioned with the Ukrainian cause after witnessing their conduct first-hand. Nevertheless, the tale of his escape to Russia is harrowing. To escape, McIntyre contacted his family and received $300, before boarding a flight from Odessa to Istanbul, and later to Moscow, fearing for his life the entire time.

McIntyre described to RT how the Ukrainians deal with spies and whistleblowers, saying that they receive a “bullet to the back of the head,” and that it’s quite a regular occurrence, as multiple fighters have simply “disappeared” after being suspected of reporting war criminals.

“And we’re supporting these guys?” McIntyre said of American and NATO involvement in the war. “And these are supposed to be our allies? And we’re supposed to put them in NATO with us? And they can’t even follow the Geneva Convention?”

Far from only supporting the Ukrainians with massive shipments of weapons and cash, McIntyre told RT that the United States has men on the ground in Ukraine, maintaining direct communications with their handlers from the CIA and other American agencies notorious for meddling in global conflict zones and unstable nations.

Keep reading.

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

STAY INFORMED

Receive regular news, commentary, and analysis straight to your inbox.

POWERED BY

DrRichSwier.com | ThePricklyPear.org

As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.